Most of this sounds too much like trickle-down economics. It doesn’t resonate well with voters, because life was getting tougher for working Americans during the Bush years too.

Republicans need to address in simple and understandable terms what they would do to stop China and other Asian nations from subsidizing what they sell at Wal-Mart and to open foreign markets to the good things Americans make. Several GOP candidates and Speaker Ryan embracing the Trans Pacific Partnership would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic—the 2012 U.S. Korean Free Trade Agreement has swelled the bilateral trade deficit and killed 100,000, mostly manufacturing, American jobs.

Tax reform must be fair and the nightmare complexity of April 15 and ideological-driven enforcement at the IRS must end. Instead, Trump and mainstream candidates promise to tinker with an arcane and fundamentally broken system and magically cut taxes and incentivize business without reducing revenue.

A conservative platform that would resonate would include: radical renegotiation of trade agreements to guarantee balanced trade and job opportunities for all participants; require health care providers and pharmaceutical companies to charge prices for procedures and drugs no higher than charged in Germany and Holland, which have similar insurance based systems and more affordable insurance; cancel the individual and corporate income taxes in favor of a simple value added tax and a federal payment for each child under 21; and require employers to publish salaries for all employees and undertake and make public salary surveys that explain differences in compensation among job categories—a generous child allowance and such employer transparency would go a long way toward improving the lot of working women.